Bob

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I have another suggestion for Oxfordians: show the Marlowe's life was in his plays to the degree that you believe Oxford's life was in Shakespeare's plays. Aside from the fact that both he and Faustus were students, there's not much that I can see. Or do the same for Jonson, leaving out the literary-feud satires. Was Jonson an alchemist, for example. Try the exercise with any playwright of the time. If you can't do it, then your not being able to do it for Shakespeare can't mean much, I shouldn't think. If you can do it, then it will greatly legitimize your thesis that Oxford put his life into the plays you say he wrote.



Your exercise points to the fundamental difference between the works of professionals like Marlowe and Jonson, who did write about the world around them, if not 'biographically,' and Shakespeare/de Vere, who wrote about his world but also about himself in that world. His need to put into expression his response to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune literally had no other acceptable outlet. In the world of plays, like the magician Prospero, he could change the effects of betrayal, make the sad, happy, make the injured, whole, transforming outcomes according to his own sense of right and wrong, or, in showing 'virtue her own feature and scorn her own image' give the 'very age and body of the time his form and pressure,' or impression.

The level of personal need that is reflected in these plays is subsumed by the notion that Shakespeare functioned as a professional, although it should be remembered that that doesn't mean he didn't possess technical and artistic skills. As John Farmer wrote in the dedication of The First Set of English Madrigals:

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for without flattrie be it spoken, those that know your Lordship know that, that using this science [music] as a recreation, your Lordship have overgone most of them that make it a profession.



As it is with Hamlet the prince, whose advice to the players was and is the best advisement we have ever had, or are ever like to have.

KC
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